Lina did not move or speak.
‘My boy is very clever, you know?’ She could have been at a dinner party. ‘Of course you do. If he weren’t so very talented, it wouldn’t ... he said to me...’ She leaned forward and smiled in a way that made Lina want to scratch her eyes out. ‘He said Dr Stephenson has secrets. Yes, he did. So you can’t hurt me, otherwise he’ll tell.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lina said meticulously. ‘I have no idea what you mean, and I am very busy–’
‘You see you cannot keep secrets from my boy, and it has to be someone else. Doesn’t it? Otherwise how will I protect my son?’
There were tears in Silene Wiley’s eyes, and they were genuine. It made it harder to distinguish drugs and grief and guilt when this love for her son was real. It didn’t change how much Lina could hate her.
‘Mrs Wiley,’ she said slowly, ‘no-one here is connected to London and the threat from the locals is over now. ESF will capture them. I don’t understand what you want.’
Silene laughed then slapped a hand over her mouth as if startled. ‘What I want?’ she hissed. ‘I want Christof never to have watched that day and never to have brought back that, that thing. I want it gone before it tells you. I want them all to hang, because they’re all guilty of something so it hardly matters. I want my boy safe. I want him safe. I want him safe.’ Sobbing through her fingers, nails digging viciously into her cheek. Then she dropped her hand. ‘And if you have to hang so that he is safe, then Dr Stephenson, I want that too.’
Lina did not move, listening to her own quiet breathing, wishing her flesh, her bones subsumed into the rocks and trees.
‘Oh yes,’ Silene murmured as if Lina had spoken. ‘If you tell London, then no,’ drawing the word out. ‘They would rather it was me, do you see? Makes them look less weak. And I can’t risk it. No, I can’t.’
The sun canted gently through the window, and it seemed impossible that it was not night-time, that this was not all happening in the darkness.
‘I think,’ Silene said, her voice coming at Lina through miles of space. ‘Yes, you understand don’t you? I’m very sorry for all this. It’s all rather ghastly, really. Exhausting.’ Pale hand fluttering around a pale face and Silene rose. The light from the doorway darkening then brightening again, and Lina could not move, retreated so far inside herself that she barely remembered how.
It didn’t matter, Lina realised. It didn’t matter who was guilty of Christopher Wiley’s death or even the trap in the grass. Because in Silene Wiley’s shattered mind there was only her own fear or guilt, and her love for her son, and Lina had no defences against her because Lina was guilty of things that would see her hang. No, not hang. Blood on stained concrete, fractured doorways. Her breath catching and stopping, catching, stopping.
For a long time Lina had not known what had taken her mother away, had not understood how a mother could end up there. And that child had become someone who needed to know. Knowledge kept you safe. Hiding your fear kept you alive, but knowledge kept you ahead. And then she’d come here, where knowledge was not about fear at all but about joy and Thiago and peace.
Until now, when a broken, corrupted, frightened woman had set her son to find Lina’s last secret, to turn Lina into the card that would win Silene the game. And Lina would go willingly, because Genni needed their father more than Lina needed anything at all.
Unless...
The swifts screamed but Lina did not move.
Unless...
Silene thought Kai knew something. Xander doubted his mother’s sanity and Devendra Kapoor might, might, be able to calm her, would surely want to. He might actually be able to save them all.
Vitaly and Kolya might be able to protect her dad. Thiago would get Devendra released, and Lina could talk to two wounded boys, and if she was pressing at their wounds then she must simply fight that guilt down.
Chapter Twenty-Three
- T. Where are you?
It took a couple of minutes for him to respond, and Lina opened another window, sending messages to both Vitaly and Kolya. She could not know if they could get anyone inside the prison holding her dad, but they were her best chance. Although ... PeaceKeepers could get in, and even if Thiago never talked about it he must still know people...
- T?
- You ok?
She took a breath. – Would ESF call off the taskforce for DK’s release?
- ?
- It would be worth it.
Nothing. If he was not alone his face would be giving nothing away at all, but if he was alone, he would be scowling ferociously and cursing in Spanish.
- This isn’t about me, she typed. Or at least was not about the trap, the blood beating at the stitches in her skin. – They’ll leave if he’s released, and then the BB will stop anyway. Please, T.
Still nothing. If he did this then the locals would know about the taskforce only once the threat was gone. If he did not, she would have to get to Govedartsi to tell Iva. Aware of her own brokenness all over again.
- Lina, I can’t let this go.
She sighed. - I know. But please, T.
- I’ll see.
If he negotiated Devendra for the taskforce then there would be no outlet for either his anger or his unwarranted guilt. But he could live with that, she thought, if she could. And she needed Devendra here more than she needed the mixed comfort of Thiago’s retribution.
She went in search of Genni next, and found her where she had expected, perhaps dreaded. On one of the sofas facing Xander, their tablets resting on their identically raised knees. Various chat and code windows were open on Genni’s screen, and Lina guessed one of those chat windows would match another on Xander’s. She thought of the programmes he still had running like hounds quartering and wished she could predict what Genni’s reaction would be if she knew about them.
‘Hey,’ she said quietly.
Genni looked up then away again. The skin of her hands was dry and Lina wanted to take her out of here into the sun and the kind air of the forests. Wanted her to love this place. Lina lowered herself beside Genni, positioning her bandaged foot gingerly on the floor, setting hair moisturiser on the table and mustering words that could be said in front of her enemy’s child.
‘I wondered if you could write a message for Dad.’
Genni did look up now, her hands falling away from the tablet. The brown of her eyes as dense and rich as treacle.
‘He’d love to hear from you.’
‘Where is he? Is he still in–’ Genni stopped and Lina breathed out.
‘Yes,’ she said. She did not know if Xander knew about her father’s arrest. ‘He’s being seen by a doctor now, and he’s okay. We can’t call him yet, but we can send messages.’
Genni stared at her, shadows beneath her eyes, worrying at the inside of her cheek.
‘Send anything you write to me and I’ll send it on.’
‘What? Why can’t I send it straight to him?’
Lina turned the pot of moisturiser in her hand. ‘Because ESF needs to check that everything we say is ... safe.’
‘So I can send it straight to them then.’
‘I won’t read it,’ Lina said. She remembered Kai saying, She wouldn’t protect you if the monsters came. And it was foolish to expect a child who barely knew her to forgive Lina for bringing the monsters to her door, but perhaps Lina was a fool. ‘I won’t, Genni. I promise. Just someone at ESF and then Dad.’
Genni turned back to the screen that she had angled away from Lina. She read something there, shot a strange, quick glance across the room to Xander and said, ‘Okay. You better not.’
Xander was ignoring both of them.
‘I won’t,’ Lina said. She waited to see if Genni might argue further but then said cautiously, ‘Do you want me to use Genni or Jericho in my message?’
Genni s
tared at her, colour rising in her face, turning the brown darker. ‘Why are you writing about me?’
‘I can hardly not, sweetie.’
Perhaps she realised that, because after another long minute she looked away and spoke more to her screen than Lina. ‘Whatever, Genni then.’
‘Okay,’ Lina said, then because she had no idea what else to say, she turned away and said, ‘Could I have a word, Xander? Outside perhaps?’
He stared at her, first bemused and then suspicious, but when she tilted her head and moved to the stairs he rose, still holding his tablet, and followed her. Once they were out in the meadow where no-one would overhear, she turned to face him, the sun on her shoulders a reassurance and a short-toed lark singing above.
‘Thank you,’ she said. He sat down on his mother’s deckchair and scowled up at her. She thought how very unguarded that expression was compared to his face when he was with his mother, and hoped.
‘I wanted to ask you about your mother.’ She had thought carefully about what to say and spoke gently, using her crutches to sink down into the vetches and grass, lower than him. ‘Whether there’s anything I can do to help.’
‘What?’ His eyes shifted away from hers.
Carefully, she thought. ‘I’ve noticed that she’s on a lot of medication and I wondered if ... perhaps there is something less powerful that would be better for her. We have a lot of meds here, and the ESF medical support is really very good.’
Xander looked at her. He had short, dense eyelashes the colour of rust and there was red around his eyes as if he had not been sleeping, or had been weeping.
‘Why do you care?’
Carefully, resting a hand over her bandages, ‘The situation here is frightening her, isn’t it? And I think the stuff she is taking might be exacerbating that, making her prone to ... irrationality maybe. I thought it might be easier for you both if she was ... more settled.’
Behind Xander, Kai was drifting slantwise through the meadow towards them, but Lina had reached the point now where Kai was so separate in her mind from either Xander or Silene that she didn’t care if he overheard.
‘So it’s nothing to do with you being guilty of anything,’ Xander said, his arms folding over his chest, his shoulders rising. ‘How do I know what you’d try to give her? She reckons you want to kill her. D’you think I’m stupid?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I really don’t, actually. I think you are trying very hard to protect your mum, which must be exhausting.’ It startled him, her saying that, and she wondered how many people had seen anything other than his size or his surliness. ‘I’m not a medical doctor,’ she added, ‘but I am a biologist, and I know what too many of the wrong drugs can do to someone.’ She lifted her hands, palms up, watching him watch her. ‘I’m just saying that they might be affecting her more and more, and that I’m here to help, if you like.’
She had always been good at hiding secrets, because she had to be, but she had not known she had it in her to lie so selfishly and baldly to someone who was still mostly a child. Kai was within earshot now, watching something in the grass, his pale form heartbreakingly adrift. She wished Thiago were back already. Using her hands to push upright, she bent to gather her crutches, the change in position sending blood and agony into her ankle strong enough to make her hiss.
‘Lina,’ Kai sang, and Lina took a swinging step towards him when Xander spoke again, not looking up at her.
‘I don’t trust you. You’re one of them. Or you were once.’
Lina looked down at his averted face and knew she had won the tiny victory she had hoped for. He didn’t trust her, but she had seeded more doubt about his mother’s lucidity, which might be all she could hope for. She said slowly, ‘You want to leave, don’t you? Once Devendra Kapoor is here?’ He lifted his gaze to hers, pupils contracting. ‘What will they think of her if she’s like this at home?’
He drew back sharply, lips pulling into a snarl, or a flinch. She turned away before he could recover, moving painfully through the flowers towards Xander’s pariah brother, fritillaries rising from her path.
‘Will they lock her up?’ Kai said. He was pulling apart early thistle seedheads, scattering down around his feet. Lina leaned carefully against the trunk of the lone pine, weariness and pain occluding her.
‘Pardon?’ she said.
Kai glanced up at her, thistledown falling from his fingers turned phosphorescent by the sunlight. ‘Will they lock her up if they think she’s mad?’
She would have tried to reassure him not long ago. Instead she was honest. ‘I doubt it. She’s too important. Unless they do pin the murder on her.’
‘Christopher Wiley,’ Kai said, smiling. He had never called either of them ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’, she realised. Perhaps there had not been time, or invitation. Had he even spoken directly to Silene, or Xander? Or anyone other than her? Lina tried to think, but the sun was painting the flowers into kaleidoscopic fires and there was something more important she needed to ask.
‘Kai, sweetie,’ she said slowly. ‘Do you know what happened when Christopher Wiley died?’
Kai did not answer, gathering white billowing seeds into his palms. Then he turned to face her and tossed both hands skyward, thistledown falling around him like snow or wonder and he laughed at the sun. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Across the meadow, Xander rose from the chair so rapidly that Lina thought he might have heard, but he was not looking at them. He strode away beyond the house, plunging into the scattered treeline there without pausing, lifting his hands to cup the back of his skull.
Lina looked back at Kai and said slowly, ‘Were you there?’
He made an odd little gesture, shaking one fist over an upturned palm. ‘She was,’ he said. ‘She was there.’
One of her crutches fell to the floor as Lina’s hand scrabbled for support against the tree. Her legs wavered and she thought she might follow her crutch downward, but she didn’t. That was it then. Was Silene guilty of murdering her husband after all? It would make all her paranoias less paranoid.
‘And then I was there.’ He was studying his hands as if they were wondrous.
‘Christ, Kai,’ she whispered, but he did not look even mildly distressed. He never really did, she realised, and perhaps that meant nothing in a child raised on trauma so she should be being more gentle, less selfish. ‘That must have been ... scary to see, sweetie.’
He glanced up at her curiously, repeated the adjective silently to himself, his hands reaching for more thistleheads. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I fought the monster.’
He had said it before. What was the monster in Kai’s mind? Or who? Something terrible enough that it could put witnessing a man’s death into insignificance.
‘Why did–’ she stopped herself. Why did he want to stay with Silene after that? What else would he choose? To return to the slums alone? She shook her head and the treeline spun, tipped; breathing deeply until pine resin and hot grasses settled her. ‘Thank you for telling me, sweetie. Are you okay here? I need to get a drink of water – will you come in?’
He lifted her hand in both of his, studying scratches she had not noticed, his fingers cool. Then he let her go and smiled his slight, orange-eyed smile. ‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘I’m keeping watch.’
She ought to have gathered him inside with her, not because he should not be alone but because he should not think he needed to be. But if she waited any longer she might not make it back to the lab, so she left. Hating her weakness and reeling from pain and revelation.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thiago did not get back until mid-afternoon, by which time Lina was fractious with impatience and her refusal to dull herself with painkillers. Neither Vitaly nor Kolya had responded to her messages, which was not unexpected so quickly, but she kept checking anyway. Genni had not sent anything through yet, and Lina needed to write so
mething herself but had no idea what to say and what to hide.
‘T,’ she said as soon as he appeared in the lab doorway. ‘How did it–’
‘Jesus, Lina.’
She fell silent, staring at him. And then smiled. If he had failed, or decided against, then he would not be so angry. ‘They agreed,’ she said, still smiling.
He muttered something rude and came towards her, one broad hand touching her cheek then cupping her shoulder. ‘You look like shit. What the fuck have you been doing?’
‘When do they hand him over? Did you see him?’
‘You’re supposed to be resting. Have you even taken your meds?’ His hand shook her, his strength and frustration held tautly back.
She lifted her own hand to cover his and tilted her head. She had sat alone here, repeating every one of the morning’s conversations endlessly in her head until she felt sick, but now Thiago was here and so cross with her that the world felt just a little more solid. ‘When, T?’
He growled faintly and released her, turning around to reach for the medicines waiting on her desk. ‘I’ll tell you once you’ve taken these,’ he said, holding them out then sitting on the stool beside hers, studying his hands intently. ‘Yes, they agreed.’
Lina swallowed the concoction of painkillers, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories obediently and waited for him to continue.
‘Handover in Govedartsi ten am tomorrow. I saw some video. He’s fine.’
‘In return for calling off the taskforce?’
Thiago scrubbed a hand over his face and scalp then dropped it again with a harsh sigh. ‘Yes.’
Across the courtyard, Xander must have opened a window because the thump of music abruptly drowned the birdsong. On top of everything else, Lina thought, she resented this too. She watched Thiago’s face though, and took a guess. ‘How did they react about the taskforce? Was it bad?’ She did not know if he had gone armed, but ought to have insisted on him carrying a jacket cam.
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